Pitt's annual spring football game wasn't packaged so much as a game as it was a kind of PantherFest, which is something like PirateFest, except, you know, with hope.

The Panthers and their faithful, particularly those faithful enough to constitute the Blue-Gold audience, are, in fact, extremely hopeful. They're the folks who detect enough positive karma still lingering in the charged atmosphere from December's politically volcanic upset of West Virginia to lift Dave Wannstedt's fellas toward the promised land of bowl implications by the time December comes again.

Major bowl implications, minor bowl implications, even a late season tussle at Connecticut with a berth in the Snausages Implication Bowl at stake would be most welcome.

What, there is no Snausages Implication Bowl?

Give it a month.

From Wannstedt's perspective, the challenges remain not only daunting but highly specialized. How do you continue to steer a program, after all, in which the players seem to perform at their optimum level only when they're 28 1/2-point underdogs on the road to a team on the verge of a national championship?

That's not exactly something you want to be arranging every week.

But, for all that, as Pitt showed consistently last night, Wannstedt's got plenty of talent accumulated from repeated successes in the recruiting process, particularly at the quarterback position as it is reconstituted by the return of Bill Stull.

"We're going to have to sit down and talk about that," Wannstedt said as his squad recessed until August. "[Pat] Bostick had some great throws, [Kevan] Smith did a good job, and [Greg] Cross came in and showed athletic things that nobody else can do, so it's a good problem to have.

"I know that this time last year, I wasn't sure we had one."

In total, four Panthers passers completed 25 of 40 throws last night against an experienced defense, 25 completions good for 251 yards and a touchdown. None were as clinically impressive as Stull, who Sept. 1 was having a fine old time on the North Side lawn when a hand injury ended his season about two hours after it started.

Stull went 6 for 6 for 54 yards on the first series last night, the best throw a sizzling sideline out to converted tight end Dorin Dickerson, who with Cedric McGee was honored as the most-improved offensive player of Pitt's spring.

"I was really pleased with Billy Stull," Wannstedt said. "In that first series, he completed passes to five different receivers, which means he wasn't focusing on any one guy; he's throwing to the open guy.

"I liked how our quarterbacks played as a group."

Of course, quarterbacks are still traditionally deployed individually, and, if Wannstedt himself liked Stull in particular, the audience predictably warmed just as certainly to Cross, the junior-college transfer who enjoyed them just as much.

"I've never been in a stadium this big; I loved it, loved the crowd, loved the atmosphere, and I can't wait to play here in the fall," said Cross, whose 29-yard scramble up the middle and 37-yard strike to Maurice Williams in the second half were the longest plays of the night.

"All of the quarterbacks are pulling for each other, and we're all trying to move the team down the field. We're all about winning."

There was little doubt what Cross was about when he got to Fort Scott Community College in Kansas two years ago, because suddenly a program that had lost 24 consecutive games started winning more often than not. When he was done, Cross had led Fort Scott to 16 victories in two seasons and into the Valley of the Sun Bowl, where he threw for two touchdowns and ran 85 yards for another.

"When I first got there and the coaches saw how athletic I was -- I mean I'd played all kinds of sports my whole life -- they told me I was trying to be so perfect as a quarterback that it wasn't working," Cross said. "They told me just to be myself. Just to have fun."

Pitt's offensive coaches should have plenty of fun when they sit down and talk about this because Cross is so fast that he could serve as an occasional fuel injector for Matt Cavanaugh's standard offense. With steady development in August added to his qualifications, he could be something much more.

For the moment, the good news appeared to be that all four quarterbacks moved the Panthers smartly against Pitt's defense, and the bad news was that all four quarterbacks moved the Panthers smartly against Pitt's defense. Spring game analysis is always a little tricky this way, except to say that most everyone involved hoped fervently that this was the last time Pitt would beat itself.

Pay no attention to that final score, 60-25, as the scoring system deployed for these elaborate scrimmages is such that it can't be computed until it fully incorporates the reverse side of IRS Form 2106.

Pay plenty of attention, however, to Greg Cross.